but you're my favourite sadness
by mimosa eyes
Summary: A series of Iris-centric scenes spanning those nine months.
1. Chapter 1

The nurse who backs her out of the emergency operating theatre maneuvers her round the corner and grips her just below the elbows and very deliberately says something to her. Iris doesn't know what it is, but it sounds soft and the woman repeats it until Iris drags her gaze away from the twin doors and onto her. Then she says it again. The tilt of her chin indicates it's a question, so Iris nods even though she still can't think of anything but Barry, flatlining on a gurney as frantic doctors call out numbers and codes, and oh god that zigzag of red right across his chest.

She's being led away by the wrist and her ears still feel like they've been muffled with cotton wool. "Stop," she says, or thinks she says, but in the next moment it doesn't matter if the nurse has heard her anyway, because her knees hit the ground and the dull pain barely registers.

Her head clears a little at this newfound altitude. Although that may have more to do with the fact that she's been physically worked into a recovery position she recognizes from first aid training. Head between her knees instead of lying down, because it's a bustling hallway; paramedics are rushing in with other casualties of what she dimly realizes counts as a genuine technological disaster. Here, in Central City. It's a horrifying revelation. And she's curled up into herself staring at the linoleum floor while her best friend is getting defibrillated not twenty meters away.

Iris lifts her head and forces herself to meet the nurse's gaze. She hopes she doesn't look as unhinged as she feels. "I'm calm," she enunciates, as lucidly as she can manage. "I can wait outside."

It's a reserve of strength she's fallen back upon before, a combination of her own resolution, and years of civilian courses attended both before and after her father's refusal to let her join the police force. Her chest twinges: Barry attended those classes with her, horsing around a little about the dummies they were told to practice on, but going stony-faced and more teary than she pretended to notice at the part on stab wounds.

Apparently she's convincing enough, because the nurse helps her up and walks her back to the glass doors that read 'Emergency' in capital letters. With a tremendous wave of relief, she notices the blips on the EKG machine, telling her his heart is beating again. He's so still and pale under the fluorescent light, though, and medical staff are still bustling around him, beginning to treat the burns on his hand and foot, producing medical equipment she's never even seen before.

When her new acquaintance starts to pull away and re-enter the theatre, Iris reaches out reflexively, touching her shoulder and breathing the words, "Thank you." She's watching Barry's chest rise and fall ever so subtly as she speaks, and it feels like thanking the universe.

The other woman hesitates fractionally, glancing between her and Barry. "You're his... family?" she asks for confirmation. At Iris' nod, she says, "I don't know if I can let you stay here. I'm not that senior, and—" She seems to gather her nerve then, and looks directly at Iris. "But I have a boyfriend, and I couldn't bear to sit in the waiting area either."

Iris blinks at that, the woman's mistaken reading of the situation taking a moment to sink in. But the truth is too complicated to explain to a stranger, albeit a kindly one, so she smiles and repeats, "Thank you," her voice stronger now.

It is only six minutes later that the line on the EKG goes abruptly flat, and then the lights in the whole hallway go out. Nine times this happens, nine times the medical assistants reboot a spare generator for the room alone, before Joe finally strides up the hallway to her, coat drenched with rainwater and eyes too dark with grief. Nine times over, she stands alone and watches Barry die and come back, heart lurching each time along with his.

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><p><strong>Title taken from Ben Hammersley's "Stairwell Wall": but you're my favourite sadness  and I'm wondering if you'll find your way home.**

**Also available on the AO3!**

**I have a great many feelings about Iris West.**

**m.e.**


	2. Chapter 2

"And you?" is the first thing Henry Allen says once she's finished speaking. "Are you holding up?"

"Yeah," Iris tells him, and after a beat pulls a face, because it's obvious even to her how automatic the response has become. Over the course of the day the lie has grown so reflexive that it ceased to exhaust her; now, the knowing look on Henry's face tugs away that shield of platitude. A tension in her shoulders and the pit of her stomach seems to go with it, like a long exhalation after holding her breath too long.

Talking to Henry, just like talking to Barry, requires honesty, directness, the shedding of pretence. It's there in his steady gaze; in the way he asked _Are you_ and not _How've you been holding up_, understanding what it is to have days measured in absolutes instead of extents.

When she comes back to herself, she's got her fingers splayed over her eyes, obscuring them from his view even though it's plainly obvious that she's crying. The spontaneity of her grief no longer surprises her, but even in her low moments she falls only to this half-anguish, protected by the stoic veneer that being raised by a single father with traditional sensibilities, develops. Not since the night of the explosion, of the emergency room and all its too much, has that shield been compromised.

She's touching her fingertips to the tears as they come, careful not to smear her make-up — waterproof and far too old, really, to work well. Back in high school Barry bought her a small pack out of his own allowance after weeks of her self-consciousness during gym lessons down at the pool, before which she agonized over whether it was worse to be seen with acne ravaging her forehead, or concealer running down her cheeks. _You look amazing_, his post-it note read. _This is just in case anyone else needs convincing._ And last night, unable to sleep, she threw off the covers, turned on the lights and hunted through her dresser for that ancient little kit, tucked into a dusty bottom corner.

Some part of her recognizes the absurdity of thinking about her mascara at a time like this. But it isn't about make-up really, just like this morning's abrupt decision to apply that waterproof mascara wasn't in practical consideration for the crying she would do at Chyre's funeral. Nowadays she has lost an essential quality of levity she wasn't aware she had. Every minor detail takes on new connotations, brings to mind shadowy memories that echo around the space in her life that Barry so seamlessly occupied. _Baby, you know it's what's inside that counts_, was all her dad said when she asked not-too-slyly to be excused from swimming class; it was for him to be his benevolently no-nonsense self, and for Barry to mediate, to so naturally bridge their viewpoints.

She switches the black telephone from her left to her right hand, then back again. The other part of her mind, the one that isn't in deep reverie, belatedly registers that Henry is calling her name, softly but insistently.

"Sorry," Iris begins to say, but even as she does Henry holds up a hand to stop her.

"Barry tells me about you," he says, once she focuses her gaze to meet his. "So I know all about this thing you do, trying to keep everyone else happy when something bad happens." Henry huffs a little as his voice lightens with fondness: "To the point where you don't look after yourself. I can see now why he finds it frustrating."

Strange, how disarmingly cheering it is to listen to him talk about Barry. For a moment Iris can't pinpoint what it is about those simple words that makes her feel instantly more buoyant. Brow furrowing a little, she tucks an errant lock of hair behind her ear, and shifts subtly so she's cradling the telephone in the nook between her cheek and shoulder.

"Barry doesn't say anything embarrassing about me, does he?" she asks, playing with the coiled black cord.

It's probably just her imagination, but Henry seems to hesitate a moment before answering, too smoothly, "Nothing that might embarrass you." His voice lilts on _embarrass _and_ you_, as if determined not to emphasize the words.

Before she can pursue that train of thought, however, Henry grows solemn again, clearing his throat quite deliberately. He starts speaking, gentle and matter-of-factly. "Iris. You've just spent ten minutes telling me all about how Barry's doing. Look at yourself, you're still wearing black because you came straight from Chyre's funeral service. You're probably here in the window of time while your dad talks to Chyre's kid at the cemetery, because you know he doesn't approve of you coming to see me."

Henry takes a breath, then, and Iris catches herself not so much nodding as slightly bobbing her head, the acknowledgement unnecessary but instinctive.

"I'm an old man, Iris," he says then, and the apparent non sequitur throws her off, makes her arch one of her eyebrows in surprise. Unheeding, Henry merely continues, "And we old people have our favorite stories. One of mine, I partly witnessed and partly was recounted. Six weeks after Barry came to live with you, your dad got Chyre to watch you while he brought Barry to a big-name psychologist on the edge of town. You'd seen how distraught Barry looked after sessions with psychologists, when they told him about post-traumatic stress delusions and recommended he not be allowed to see me."

His voice chokes a little at that, but he talks through it. "You only had a couple of hours before they got back, and you had to talk Chyre over to your side, but somehow you managed it. All so you could ask me how to help Barry."

The tears are running freely for Iris at this point, but dimly through them she realizes why hearing his dad talk about Barry was so soothing. Henry spoke in present tense, earlier, whereas without thinking much of it, for days now they've been referring to Barry like a thing of the past, all _Oh, pizza, Barry would've loved this _and _I remember how he burned you brownies in that oven_. Another memory: Barry hugging her in the early hours of the day he left for college, lips pressing into her hair the words of comfort that comprised his goodbye. _I'm not even leaving really. You aren't losing me._

"That was fourteen years ago. Fourteen years ago, you looked up at me like I had all the answers to every trouble in the world, because that's what you do, Iris, you get _involved._ Fourteen years on, you're still doing it. I just don't want you to get _overwhelmed._"

Henry leans forward, his expression a complex of gratitude, love, self-conflict. "Thank you," he says finally, after debating his next words for a long moment. "For looking after him for me."

Then the guards are coming forward to take him back to his cell, and Iris stays put there long after, trying to set the phone down.

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><p><strong>Thought this would be an interesting dynamic to take a gander at.<strong>

**I haven't felt up to writing — physically to some extent, but mostly mentally. Hope you enjoyed this unexpected update though.**

**m.e.**


	3. Chapter 3

Someone's placed a foldout chair beside the gurney. Iris is willing to bet on Cisco — the Latino with a sweet tooth, an easy grin, and depths of tact and empathy beneath a lightheartedness only sometimes strained. On her previous visit, and her first alone, Cisco was the one who paused just outside the doorway to unobtrusively suggest, "You know, he can probably hear you. Try talking to him."

She hopes he didn't notice the way her hands flitted indecisively that day, alternately fixing her hair and clutching the edge of the bed. In some ways, though, she intuits that he wouldn't judge her for it.

Today, in tacit gratitude, she's brought a cardboard carrier of drinks over from Jitters for each member of the S.T.A.R. Labs team. Freshly squeezed orange juice for Cisco, pulpy and with a shot of sugar water in it to take the edge off the sourness. Coffee, with milk and no sugar, for Dr. Wells; one time she caught him with grape soda from Big Belly Burger, but something about the periodic set of his jaw compels her to keep that secret.

Both beverages are the culmination of substantial trial and error on her part. The process is still ongoing, in fact, with Caitlin, on whom she's decided today to try out a black tea infused with apricot. Iris sets down the drinks for them to collect later, then goes to sit on the foldout chair.

"You got another Science Showcase in the mail today," she brightly informs Barry, although she says it to the floor as she digs the magazine out of her bag. "And my phone is fully charged, and Cisco told me their Wifi password — 'back2dafuture', would you believe it — so with any luck I can decrypt the geek-speak."

Hastily, she leafs past a five-page feature on the 2013 North American Particle Accelerator Conference, pointedly averting her eyes from the quotes in bold font that summarize various scientists' view on what they were bracingly calling the 'Central City Setback'.

_You don't know_, she thinks furiously at the words, at the portrait of the balding physicist who said them. _You don't understand._

This time, instead of dithering by the mattress, her hand goes straight for Barry's. The feel of his fingers between hers, callused where he holds his pen, seems to anchor her.

"My dad's coming to see you tomorrow," she tells him, propping up the copy of Science Showcase against his hip so she can keep holding his hand while she browses articles. "You'll like that, he'll give you a blow-by-blow account of Captain Singh's antagonism with the ad hoc forensic assistant they brought in while you're... while you're away."

A beat, in which Barry would normally have smiled and taken abrupt interest in the floor to hide his bashfulness. Or else gloated exaggeratedly at the rare reminder that his talents did not, after all, go unappreciated by his superiors at the precinct. Iris clears her throat to fill the silence, bridge the gap. "Detective Pretty Boy, that transfer from Keystone? Yeah, he volunteered to cover his shifts so he could come see you. Which is good, because Dad'd be too busy otherwise, and—"

She bites back the news about Chyre that threatens to spill out into the air and press down on them both. Because this morning she looked herself in the mirror, looked at the bruises of sleeplessness under her eyes, and swore to come here and make reality sound like an ideal place for Barry to wake up to. Because the other day her dad brought home a years-old framed photo of himself and Chyre wearing, for a laugh, white wigs and fake beards at the acceptance ceremony for their long service awards; they promised each other then to make it a tradition. Because her black dress is still hanging in the dryer from when she attended Chyre's funeral; because the last time she tried to walk down the hall to the laundry room, she paused outside Barry's old door for a minute that turned into an afternoon, and then into her dad's hand at her elbow, guiding her gently away.

But then she thinks of Henry Allen, watching her through thick protective glass and the lens of familiarity, almost parental, that comes from seeing someone grow through childhood. _Look after yourself, too_, he basically told her, _Barry would insist you do._

She brought the magazine in part so she would have something to say to Barry, so she wouldn't have to scour through the memory of the past fortnight for something positive to talk about. Now a third option occurs to her.

"—And because it gave me a reason to ask him out for coffee," Iris says, in lieu of reporting Chyre's passing. The last few words seem to rush out of her; she feels the rightness of confiding in Barry even as she follows the impulse. "Barry... look, his name is Eddie, alright? I thought he was just some pretty face, but he isn't. He's thoughtful, he's sweet, and he's... so, so good to me. I can't tell my dad. But I can talk to you, can't I?"

_I can always talk to you_, she thinks.

So this, Eddie, is how she will stop neglecting herself. Iris thinks of the first night they spent back home, how quiet it was, how it wasn't night at all but late afternoon, only they'd been at the hospital for one complete circadian cycle and whether it was nighttime or not, they both needed sleep. She thinks of how it was only quiet because her initial sobbing had petered out, for lack of energy, into a silent streaming of tears, tears that meant worry and shock more than grief. Later that evening was the first time she went to bed leaving her phone on with the volume turned up, so that any news of Barry would wake her for sure.

Then she thinks of Eddie, sitting at a table in Jitters across from her after hours; Eddie, knowing not to try and hold her hand, just stirring vast quantities of sugar into his Yorkshire blend so that she could surreptitiously compose her hitching breaths to the rhythm of his teaspoon clinking against the ceramic; Eddie, trading his tea for her coffee, unexpectedly murmuring some corny line that made her crack a watery smile, about her needing a break from _bitter things too hard to swallow_.

It's always felt right, the way Barry could make her smile; but that doesn't mean it's right for his absence to make her cry. So when she asks, "Is it bad that I don't feel guilty about being happy with Eddie, while you're here in a coma?" she steadies herself with the knowledge that she means the question rhetorically. And she needs that as an anchor, because this is the first time she's felt strong enough to refer to Barry's condition without euphemisms like _sleeping_ or _away._

Still, she studies him for an answer, an acknowledgement of some kind. But of course his face is slack, his warm eyes closed. His eyebrows aren't furrowed with concern for her quagmire; his hair is on the wrong side of mussed; his skin, usually littered with ink splotches and the occasional iodine stain, is pale, sterilized, empty.

Iris gives his hand a squeeze. Google told her he might not even be able to feel the gesture, so really all it does is epitomize the one-sidedness that, at least for now, has to characterize their exchanges. However, as if in resolute denial, she persists in starting one final conversation thread. "You were on the news, Barry," she tells him. "They listed all the people who died, and then some who were injured. And then they called you a miracle, a survivor. They didn't even get your name, but you gave people hope — you give people hope."

With her free hand, she nudges the copy of Science Showcase so the glare from the lights above her doesn't reflect off the glossy pages. "Come on," she urges him, without expecting response. "Let's read about organ transplant advancements."

She reads to him for an hour, cover to cover, and the next day lets him hear her dissertation draft. After a while, it almost feels normal, again.

* * *

><p><strong>The initial draft of this chapter was much angstier. But I feel like we need to see more of Iris adjusting to this turn of events; and I think Eddie should be a part of that.<strong>

**m.e.**


End file.
